Cabinets or enclosures for circuit boards are in common use in the electronics art and generally consist of a metal cabinet having a plurality of guides or racks for the circuit boards. The electrical switching or other components carried by the circuit boards generate heat. This heat tends to be concentrated in the area of the component and may be damaging to the component. To combat this problem, such cabinets generally utilize convective/forced air cooling of the printed circuit boards, and thus are usually susceptible to dirt build-up and to "hot spots" caused by the shielding or deflecting of the air flow by the components carried by the circuit boards.
The circuit boards may be of the printed circuit type and generally have terminations on one end of the circuit board. Electrical connection to an external circuit is generally established by the insertion of the board into a connector mounted on the rear wall of the cabinet with the circuit terminations on the end of the circuit board in pressural wiping contact with the terminals of the connector. Because the pressure necessary to insure good electrical contact is high in a high pin density environment, anything less than perfect alignment may be damaging to the connector or to the circuit boards.
Particular industries such as the aircraft, automotive, computer and others are moving toward solid state power switching and controlling. Such solid state power controllers (SSPC's) are the functional equivalent of a solid state relay, except that they incorporate over current and/or short circuit sensing circuitry coordinated with timing logic to protect the solid state power controller against self-destruction. As described in the Cronin U.S. Pat. No. 4,110,809, dated Aug. 29, 1978, and entitled "Solid State Power Controller With Low Signal Level Control" reaction to short time overloads is avoided to permit the voltage surges typically present in many electrical power systems. Typically, the drive/logic circuitry is contained in one electronic package or "can" and the power switching device is contained in a second "can". In many instances, it is desirable to locate a large number of the solid state power controllers in a particular location remote from the control station (such as the flight station of an aircraft) because of limited space, accessibility, etc.
As illustrated in the Cronin U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,058, dated Apr. 13, 1976, and entitled "Programmable Wiring System and Junction Box for Use Therein", it is possible to program or selectively change the interconnections of the control system to the remote SSPC's or electrical loads without disturbing the previously installed wiring harness. Since solid state power controllers are generally concentrated as to their location, and since they are heat sensitive, problems may arise as a result of the heat generated in these restrictive locations.
The installation of control circuits in limited spatial environments such as aircraft flight stations presents a continuing problem in the connection of remote or shipside wiring to the control circuits. The wire programming devices are typically of a significantly different depth than the printed circuit boards which contain the controllers. This variation in cabinet depth generally prevents the use of automatic wiring techniques which typically require a planar back panel to establish the wiring connections by "wire wrap" or "poke home" pins.
Other art relevant to this invention and the teachings of which are incorporated therein by reference, includes the Cronin U.S. Pat. No. 3,701,964, dated Oct. 31, 1972, and entitled "Flat Cable Electrical Wiring System" directed to a wire programmer and the Spurling U.S. Pat. No. 3,975,805 directed to special thermal clamps for circuit boards and the like.